A Broken Blade
• July 26, 2011

 

-The Washington Blade newspaper has announced that it has published its last edition. Needless to say, it came as a complete surprise to its loyal readers, not to mention its loyal staff, who just a few days previous were celebrating their 40th anniversary.

We once attended a gathering at the National Press Club where Ted Turner was the guest speaker. The CNN founder stated it was “all over” for newspapers, and predicted that they would soon be a thing of the past. This was in 1981.

People have been predicting that newspapers would soon be dead for years. And every year, several more die. Now people are predicting that print newspapers and magazines will be gone within ten years. Turner predicted print publications would be dead by 1991.

Okay, so he was a little off, but the fact remains that many major and minor newspapers and magazines have gone out of business over the past 20 years or so, and prospects for many other major dailies are not looking promising. Just look at our very own Washington Post. Its pages are diminishing every month. The City Paper has gone through equally tough times in recent memory.

In our five and half decades of service to the community, we have seen the Washington Evening Star go under, as well as a myriad of weekly and bi-weekly publications including the stately Uptown Citizen, The Hill Rag, O. Roy Chalk’s publication, and many more. ?Here at Georgetown Media Group we are encouraged that our advertisers and readers have been loyal.

We are now in our 56th year of publication, and while we have undergone several changes over the years, we are confident that our publication has a place in the community and we will remain a voice for the residents.

‘Dismissive’ Columnist?
•

 

-To the editor:
I generally look forward to useful and interesting information regarding local real estate in your publication, but was surprised at the similarly dismissive responses from Darrell Parsons to consecutive readers’ questions, published in the 24 March 2010 “Ask the Realtor” column.

Responding to a reasonable question from Tenleytown’s Norma T. regarding recommended areas to focus her house improvement investment, Mr. Parsons seemed to go out of his way to avoid the question, while instead offering a rebuke to the reader, basing his negative remarks upon his own assumptions. Mr. Parson then added a bit of unsolicited interior design advice.

Maureen C. of Cleveland Park provided another chance for Mr. Parsons to make assumptions, while he again ignored the reader’s central question, which in this instance was about house design. Sight unseen, Mr. Parsons first assumed the price range of Maureen’s home, then suggested (twice) that she reduce her asking price!

Although I can certainly appreciate Mr. Parsons personal experience-based point of view,
I can’t help but empathize with the readers, as they might have hoped for a more sensitive ear and positive direction.

My suggestions might seem novel to the realtor: First, respect your readers, and if making any assumptions, assume that the readers are taking the time to ask because they really seek advice, and not because they wish to be made an example of Mr. Darrell’s assumptions and following conclusions, or that wish to be entertained rather than informed.

Second, when tempted to provide advice outside one’s area of expertise, refrain,
and instead provide the reader with a referral to a knowledgeable professional who might better address the reader’s concerns. If a question requests facts regarding return on investment, answer that, and leave the interior design advice to interior designers.
If a question is about house design, perhaps a referral to an architect or residential designer would be more appropriate.

Just as realtors hope to enjoy referrals from other professionals, realtors should know that sometimes, the best way to serve is through a wise referral to, or consultation with, someone who can directly address an issue.

In summary to Ms. T., Mr. Parsons promises future answers, if the readers can just “hang in there”, and signs off: “Good Luck!” I can’t wait.

Shawn Glen Pierson
Georgetown

The author is the founder of Architétc, a D.C.-based architecture and design firm.

—

Dear Mr. Pierson:
My answers to readers are subjective of course, but they are offered with the utmost respect and sensitivity to the situation of those asking the questions. Of necessity, the length of the answers is limited by the amount of space which can be devoted to these written answers. As a result, the answers are not as thorough as I would like them to be, and a certain amount of generalization is required. I can see that this might come across as making assumptions and/or being insensitive, so I will be more tuned into that as I answer future questions.

One of the downsides of writing rather than speaking face-to-face is that voice inflection and facial expression are left out. In answering Norma T., I was attempting to inject a little humor in the response. I can see that the “humor” came out like a bit of a smart-aleck. Not my intent, of course. Despite those things, my basic underlying advice is sound, and is very clear that it is important to have the work done by appropriate professionals. I disagree that suggesting neutral colors is straying into the area of “interior design advice.”

As I re-read my answer to Maureen S., I can see that she might have received my comments as dismissive. What I intended was to give her reassurance that though her house hadn’t sold yet, she shouldn’t despair, because it is taking longer for properties to sell in this market. Unfortunately, I had to guess at what she meant by “unusual design.” That required either a generalized answer or making more assumptions than I had already made. However, my attempt at relating her situation to music still raises a valid point. The more “unusual” a house is, the narrower the field of potential buyers. I did not suggest that she redesign her property, or that one design is better than other. My answer had to do with getting her house sold, and it is a common observation that a larger percentage of buyers are not looking for houses with unusual designs. Regardless of the state of the real estate market, when the potential buyer pool is smaller for a given property, it takes longer for that property to sell. This could be related to floor plan, exterior appearance, paint colors, amenities, or any number of other possibilities. My comments are not, for example, about the relative value of one color paint over another, but rather that there is a much larger field of potential buyers for a house painted in a “neutral” color than for one painted in bright orange. Skilled realtors know this sort of thing, and part of their job is to communicate it in a sensitive way to sellers.

I welcome any further comments or suggestions.

Darrell Parsons

The author is a Georgetown-based realtor and is the author of our biweekly “Ask the Realtor” column. He blogs at georgetownrealestatenews.blogspot.com.

Let’s Save the Mall
•

America’s National Mall has problems. Look at the lawn. There are parts of the Mall where the grass is, well, not grass at all, but rather weeds. On some of the most visited areas of the Mall you can find several types of grass and weeds growing together in a most unappealing manner.

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund has hired landscape professionals to show the public how the Mall should and can look by improving the grounds at and around the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. The irrigation system we installed in the early years of the wall is now fully operational. While it costs $30,000, there was no alternative but to repair the system. The millions of annual visitors and our fallen heroes deserve inspiring surroundings and greenery. Right now we are also undertaking weed control, aeration, seeding and other work. This is being paid for with private funds.

The total area we are repairing exceeds 13 acres, which includes the wall, the knoll to the east, the area around the park ranger kiosk and the future site for the education center at the wall. The plan is to keep this area privately maintained in perpetuity with quality care.

We have taken the initiative many times, in large and small ways over the years, to help take care of the Memorial and the site since 1982. We have designed and installed two different lighting systems. We have inscribed names and conducted engineering studies. We even keep an insurance policy on the Memorial in the event of damage.

The National Park Service does not need people to complain about the Mall; it needs people to be involved. The fiscal situation impacting the Mall is simply that there are billions of dollars in maintenance backlogs in our National Parks. Places like Yosemite, Antietam and wilderness areas need a lot of help. Do we light a candle or curse the darkness?
The foresight and boundless energy of President Teddy Roosevelt started our National Park System over 100 years ago. It is up to each and every one of us to do our share by visiting these parks and by giving back, if we have the resources, as volunteers or contributors.

As comedian Lily Tomlin wisely said, “I always wondered why somebody didn’t do something about that. Then I realized I was somebody.”

Jan Craig Scruggs is a Vietnam veteran and founder of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund.

To A Great Height
•

It was a turbulent week in the world, the country and Washington. We saw a spreading oil spill and the sight of birds covered in oil. We saw grossly wealthy bankers raising their hands to testify blankly on Capitol Hill. Grief continued for a murdered teacher, the storms of heated political battles built locally over disputed school funds and nationally over immigration and financial reform.

Through all that week, the life-affirming passage of Dr. Dorothy Height, a kind of coming-out and going-up processional celebrated all over the city, steadied this community and shone the light on the best of humankind and the best kind of human being.

The life of Dr. Height, the renowned leader and champion of civil and women’s rights who passed away the previous week at the age of 98, was remembered, memorialized, and finally enshrined all week, not with great grief and sorrow, but with stories, music and warm, fond memories.

The passage took place among the gatherings of her Delta Sigma Theta sorority sisters at Howard University. It took place on a day full of people who stood in long lines for a long time at the headquarters of the National Council of Negro Women on Pennsylvania Avenue, the organization which Height had led with ever-increasing effectiveness and influence for decades.

The journey continued at Shiloh Baptist Church in Shaw of a Wednesday evening, where over a thousand people gathered, many of them aging figures from the civil rights movement of which Height was a critical, if often unacknowledged, member.

That night, the spirit was as big as the sound made by a huge choir, and it was proud with memories and with the presence dignitaries, from the Clintons to the King family, to local luminaries.

And finally, people filled the pillared depths of the National Cathedral for her funeral, with President Barack Obama, the brisk-walking, living fulfillment of her dreams, the first black president of the United States, delivering a eulogy, calling her “Queen Esther to this Moses generation.”

All these places comprised the world she lived in, prodded with her insistent courage, made better for African Americans, for women, for all of us, with a dignified, moving-forward persistence of will, and unchallengeable moral vision and embracing, graceful warmth. These places were signifiers of sisterhood, of calling and profession, of duty and accomplishment, and, here in Washington, of community and the home that she made here.

If the Shaw church celebration rocked with music the final stop had a more stately cadence.

The National Cathedral is the church of the nation, where, by ceremony, service and prayer, a person is certified as belonging to the ages. Not that Dorothy Height needed verification. If many Americans did not know her fully or enough, every one in the pews, front back and center, knew her, many with real memories of her.

Reverend Willie T. Barrow, chairman of the Board of the Rainbow Push Coalition in Chicago, called her “my mentor, a pioneer, she led the way for all of us. She led the way for civil rights, and women’s rights, our rights. All of us are forever in her debt, because she was there long before there was such a thing as a civil rights movement. Yes, she was.”

Virginia Williams, herself something of a pioneer in many fields, including music and being an unofficial mother for the District while her son Anthony Williams served two terms as mayor, said “she towered over everybody. She was the guiding spirit of the fight for justice.”

A woman at least two or three generations removed from Height who had worked with her said that “we all learned from her: never stop, keep on moving forward, fight hard, don’t quit. She had that fighting spirit and she had grace.”

President Obama said she was always welcome at the White House. “And she would come over. She came over twenty times.” “She was born when slavery was a living memory, and she fought for justice when nobody else did. She was humble. She didn’t care about credit. She belonged in the pantheon. ”

“She was a righteous woman,” he said.

Poet Maya Angelou recited a psalm, opera great Denyce Graves sang and the Clintons were there, as were the Cosbys, boxing promoter Don King, a portrait in flags and bling, senators, congressmen, mayors and movie stars. Her nephew, Dr. Bernard Randolph, remembered meeting her in New York where she had come to stay with their family. He recalled a stirringly gifted young girl and was admonished to be “at our best behavior” for Miss Dorothy.

It was a bright sunlight, stately morning, and it was as if Dorothy Height, with all her long life done, had come into the light of glory for all of us, revealed for all the things she had done in her life, for all to see. The moment might have been when gospel legend BeBe Winans moved through “Jacob’s Ladder” as if it was lament and salve, all at once:
“After you’ve done all you can … you plant your feet, and square your shoulders, hold your head up and wait on him,” he sang. “After you’ve done all you can, you just stand.”

It’s what Dorothy Height did all her life, squared her shoulders, stood up.

At the end, everybody stood, and there was this sea of hats. Glorious hats.

Dorothy’s hats.

Purple, black, large and round, imposing or flirtatious. There was a movement of sisters in hats of all colors, feathery and strong all the same at once, exiting down the stairs, some to touch the funeral car, walking past a prophetlike Dick Gregory, out into the sunlight. You could hear women’s voices, girl’s voices and hats, standing on the street corner and at bus stops, young and old, talking about Dorothy Height come to glory, looking forward.
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The Economic Recovery Fantasy
•

 

-I freely confess that I regard it as a triumph if I can balance my checkbook. My father was a certified public accountant and surely despaired of his second son (the first became a CPA!) who had no head for numbers.

Like most Americans, though, I find it laughable, if not outright mockery, when the White House and the lapdog media tell me that the nation is now recovering from the recession. The media, as just one example, is bleeding thousands of jobs that are unlikely to ever return.

What I do know is that, as of Nov. 1, 115 banks have failed this year. They represented combined assets of $19.5 billion at the end of September. Most have been gobbled up by larger banks. In 1989, at the height of the savings and loan crisis, the FDIC closed 534 banks or about 10 a week.

Ron Paul, a Republican congressman from Texas, flatly says, “A false recovery is under way. I am reminded of the outlook in 1930 when the experts were certain that the worst of the Depression was over and that recovery was just around the corner. Instead, the interventionist policies of Hoover and Roosevelt caused the Depression to worsen, and the Dow Jones Industrial average did not recover to 1929 levels until 1954.”

It took ten years and a world war for America to dig out of the Great Depression.

The president’s economic team — Christina Romer, Peter Orszag, Larry Summers, Timothy Geithner and Jared Bernstein — scare the heck out of me.

I would much rather have Ben Stein running the treasury and Larry Kudlow overseeing the national economy.

The waste of billions of taxpayer dollars in the bilious “stimulus” bill was the ultimate wet dream of legislators, the opportunity to tap the treasury for every “pork” project they had been promising the voters.

Far worse, however, is the healthcare “reform,” if passed. As reported recently in the Weekly Standard, Medicare fraud now costs Americans an estimated $60 billion a year. Compare that with the annual $8 billion in profits of all the private insurance companies combined!

The Pelosi-Reid bill is Medicare on steroids, but the yet unanswered question is this: If Congress can require you to buy insurance even if you don’t want to, what else can you be compelled to do?

Christiana Romer recently testified before Congress that the stimulus bill has accomplished little at this point. The abortive “Cash for Clunkers” program has been calculated to have actually cost the government six times the rebate whose effect lasted all of a month.

Meanwhile, when its treasury notes are not bought by foreign investors, the nation buys its own debt, a scheme that is impossible to maintain. I do not loan money to myself. I either save it or spend it.

Congress should be reducing taxes — the U.S. tax rate on corporations is among the highest in the world — and taking steps to relieve the tax burden on small businesses which are the heart of employment and the economy in general.

Congress is also getting ready to raise the cost of energy for every American family and enterprise with the hideous “cap and trade” bill.

Energy in America has long been one of the most affordable elements of the economy, but the Obama administration is throwing billions at the least productive elements called “clean energy,” solar and wind, while declaring war on coal that provides just over half of all the electricity we use every day.

The figures cited for unemployment are a bad joke. Officially set at 9.5 percent, it is actually likely to be closer to 14 percent, about the same amount as during the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Everyone is aware that the economy is not recovering. It is reflected in reduced inventories. It is reflected in continued layoffs. It is reflected in retail advertisements offering two-for-one deals. It is reflected in less consumer spending. On Halloween, my local mall already had a big Christmas tree on display.

I find it insulting that the government is eager to give money to people defaulting on their mortgages because they couldn’t afford them when the government was pressuring mortgage lenders to make them.

I find it insulting to be told about jobs “created or saved” by the White House when this is a pure fantasy. Only private enterprise creates real jobs. Government jobs add nothing to the economy except another layer of bureaucracy. What America needs is productivity.

I find it insulting to be told that the recession is over when it is just taking a breather before the mounting debt from White House initiatives overwhelms us all, rising unemployment continues, and senseless legislation is still in the pipeline.

None of this is good news, but it is, at least, the real news.

Show Us the Money
•

Say, you might ask, whatever happened to the teacher’s union contract?

What happened to that $34 million-dollar deficit or that surplus that wasn’t there?

And how are Chief Financial Officer Natwar Ghandi and DCPS Chancellor Michelle Rhee getting along?

Last time we looked, things looked mighty confusing on the budget front. Rhee and Gandhi were arguing while testifying before the city council on money matters, Gandhi arguing a) there wasn’t any surplus and b) he wouldn’t sign off on control by parties providing private funding.

But now it seems everything, we’re happy to say, is fine and dandy. Sort of.

On May 11, the Washington Post, the District schools and the mayor reported that the city was set to fund the teachers contract, its pay raises, retroactive and current. That agreement, which would cause $38 million in cuts elsewhere in the District budget, would pave the way for an eventual teachers’ union members vote on the contract, worth $140 million.

Mayor Fenty, Rhee and Gandhi appeared together at the announcement to give the appearance of unity. The solution of cuts in the budget, shifting of stimulus funds and private funds at a later date, appeared okay with Gandhi. The agreement must now await a rank and file vote by union members.

Meantime, Rhee has been busy. She announced that she will double the number of senior managers for public schools in the form of “instructional superintendents” with salaries ranging from $120,000 to $150,000. She also announced recently that DCPS would be hiring 400 new teachers.

But some answers still remain hazy. Where is all this money for new hires coming from when just a week ago we heard so much talk of surpluses that weren’t there and deficits that were? If it comes purely from budget cuts, lauded as the perfect stopgap, the District will still pull funding away from public programs on an already spare pocketbook, and just might find itself in a similar pecuniary pickle down the road. The mayor’s solution may not be as elegant as he would have us believe, and it warrants closer scrutiny. [gallery ids="99130,102678" nav="thumbs"]

Last Thoughts on Philly
•

So, the great pizza affair finally looks like it’s drawing to a close. On Feb. 19, the city’s Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs served an illegal use notice to Potomac Street’s Philly Pizza Company, echoing a Board of Zoning Adjustment decision a few days earlier to close the University’s favorite huckster of sauce and cheese on the grounds that it was operating as a fast-food establishment, not as the sit-down restaurant for which it is zoned. It had been a lingering, painfully slow fight — last November, Philly suffered a similar ruling but lucked out with a temporary reprieve until the BZA could reconvene this month. Clocking in at over seven hours, the final hearing was one of near-mythic proportions, a kind of neighborhood armageddon where the issue’s major players could take the field, voice their side and duke it out one last time. Neighbors were finally given the opportunity to speak (in the interest of time, citizen testimony was not heard at the November meeting), and ANC commissioners again submitted their two cents, reinforcing the claims of their unhappy constituents. Of course, Philly owner Mehmet Kocak and his legal team took the floor as well, arguing that the handful of cocktail tables dotting the cramped pizza parlor cemented its status as a proper restaurant.

When the dust had cleared, the neighbors came out on top, and while Philly might have enjoyed a few days’ respite until the city could enforce their decision, the DCRA notice three days later effectively put to an end all the revelry, the good times for students and headaches for everyone else. At that particular corner, at least.

For the record, it’s worth noting that Kocak’s cooperation and diplomacy on this issue had been lukewarm at best. He seemed to hardly notice the clamor over his late-night clientele until the blogs, populace and community boards were all screaming about it. Even then, the solutions he offered were cursory: roll a few trash cans in the street, ask a bored policeman or two to check in every once and a while and hope the situation works itself out. The whole time, his put-upon attitude earned him few friends or allies. Georgetown students, when the ruling was reported on the University blog Vox Populi, seemed to shrug their shoulders and move on. There are other places in town to grab a slice.

To be sure, the BZA’s decision was the right one. Philly had been operating beyond the parameters of its license and indirectly made lives miserable for its neighbors across the street — all of whom have lived on the block for far longer. The community, however — the ANC, neighbors, students — will have to work hard to prove that this wasn’t an isolated lynching. The precedent set by the ruling must be upheld when dealing with similar problems at Tuscany, Domino’s and others, which very likely will inherit the crowds once commanded by Philly. After all, inebriated, early-morning revelers bent on greasy food will gravitate toward the nearest alternative.

Which warrants a word or two about the early-morning revelers: as those directly responsible for the complaints of neighbors, they bear much of the responsibility here, and deserve to be held accountable more than they have been. We urge the neighborhood boards (the ANC and BID especially) to allocate the necessary funding to ensure, if problems continue to arise, that officers are regularly on hand to halt the littering and noise at the source.

Remembering Lena Horne
•

In the 1980s, Lena Horne, a pioneer, legend and star in her mid-60s, put on a one-woman show called “Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music,” which became the longest-running solo performance in Broadway history.

She brought the show to the Warner Theatre in Washington, and if you had the good fortune to experience it (and that’s the right word), you got the essence of Horne, and a pretty good idea of what courage and perseverance were required to succeed in America if you happened to be black or of mixed race parentage and if you happened to be born early in the last century.

Horne brought all of her life experience, her humor, her still-burning bright beauty, her vocal abilities and her shazam style to the performance. She sang her signature song “Stormy Weather” twice during the course of the night. “I was young when I first sang it,” she said, and sang it right there like a naïve, lovely young girl, and sang it again, all the stormy weather she had experienced herself at full throat. “This is me now,” she said.

Horne came from a mixed marriage, and was married at one time to Lennie Hayton, a top conductor and arranger at MGM when the studio’s musicals where American landmarks.

When it came to civil rights and racial history, she was a little like Zelig, being everywhere: she was a Cotton Club chorine, she was both famous and half visible as an MGM starlet and star, including Vincente Minnelli’s “Cabin in the Sky” and “Panama Hattie,” in which she sang “Stormy Weather.” She was in numerous MGM musicals, but her roles tended to have the position of production numbers, which could be cut if the films where shown in the segregated South (and they were).

In the 1940s she worked with the controversial and politically active singer and performer Paul Robeson, a man of huge gifts and anger. She made United Service Organizations tour stops (where German POWs were routinely seated in front of African American soldiers), a task at which she balked.

She took part in the dramatic civil rights marches of the 1960s and sang on behalf of the National Council of Negro Women and the NAACP.

Her music, once she stopped making Technicolor movies, was beyond category, beyond jazz and completely enduring. She recorded well into her 80s.

Through all the trials and tribulations, the difficulties that were part of her life, she never succumbed to such shallow notions as complaining. She just kept on doing what she loved, stood up tall, and was dazzlingly emblematic of class, as in classy, as in first class. [gallery ids="99131,102679" nav="thumbs"]

Vancouver 2010
•

So, how do you like the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver so far?

If you’re an American, quite a bit, thank you very much.

If you’re one of the NBC sportcasters here, you like it even more, because now you’ve got an almost legitimate excuse to talk about practically nothing but Americans.

If you’re Canada, the host nation, probably not so much, for obvious and not-so-obvious reasons. If you’re from Russia, even less. You and your president are mad as hell about it all.

This has been an unexpectedly dizzying and surprising winter Olympics, at turns exposing everything that’s right and everything that’s wrong with these every-four-years efforts. If nothing else, we’ve seen a couple different sides to the host nation, for better and worse.

That image of the Canadians as bland, modest, mild-mannered folks who are patient and have things in perspective and proportion, well, that one took a small hit. They are as crazed about gold as anybody else, and carry as much bellowing national pride as the next country, which happens to be their too-good neighbor, the United States.

The Canadians, in their efforts to create a really fast luge and bobsled competition, created a course that athletes and experts complained was way too fast. It certainly proved to be too fast for a young luge competitor from Georgia who was killed when he lost control at somewhere around 90 miles an hour.

That tragedy, right before the start of the games, was a huge controversy with charges, tortured explanations, and countercharges in the midst of competition. It’s not being talked about too much any more, except perhaps in the Georgian village where they’re still mourning the loss of their hometown athlete.

The Canadians, who should be good in these events because there’s lots of ice, mountains, and snow there — as opposed to Washington — haven’t fared well. Last two times they hosted the winter Olympics they got no gold. They finally broke the spell this time, but then the United States — with most of their NHL stars playing for Russia, Sweden and Canada — managed to knock off the Sidney Crosby-led Canadian team, a huge upset.

The Russian hockey team, with Alex Ovechkin at the helm, lost to Slovakia. Russia was shut out in the medals for pairs skating, where China finished first and second, and when defending gold medalist Evgeni Plushenko, a boyish Putin look-alike in sequins, lost the gold to American Evan Lysacek in men‘s figure skating, he got peevish. He waltzed up to the gold podium at the medals ceremony then, after some comments about skaters who don’t do a quadruple jump not being manly, he walked out. Russian President Putin and his wife also complained about the loss.

And then there was our country ’tis of thee. Even if the Americans don’t win another medal, they’ve kicked butt. This would be really wonderful to behold if we didn’t have to listen to the various broadcasters point out the obvious to us, instead of letting us enjoy it.

This, in spite of the fact that this has not turned out to be the Vonncouver Olympics.

We’ve seen too much of the golden girl, in both senses of the word: her hurt shin, her pained grimaces, her bikini poses, her personal life, her long hair, all of that. She won a gold in the downhill and flashed her gutsy brilliance, fell in another race, and raced conservatively in the super-G for a bronze. Not bad at all, but just modest enough to let others shine.

Others won big also, with Shani Davis taking gold and silver in speed skating, Julia Mancuso winning two silvers and Apolo Ohno setting a record for Olympic medals with short track skating.

Then there’s Bode Miller. Remember him? Like Vonn, Miller was the hyped American athlete in Torino and crumbled like a cookie, with no medals. Here, he’s been about as good as he can get, getting a bronze, silver and gold so far, and a lot less attention, while looking like the scruffy skier Robert Redford might have played once.

Finally, there’s Shaun White, the red-headed snowboarder in a class by himself. I think I saw him working his way to the moon after one of his runs. Confident without being arrogant, articulate, shrewd and funny, he’s the coolest guy in Vancouver.

Canada has enjoyed a few victories, though. The gold medal win by dark-horse moguls skier Alex Bilodeau, the country’s first in a Winter Olympics, prompted a fire of excitement nationwide. More touching was seeing Bilodeau’s older brother Frederic, who has cerebral palsy, weep with joy when the results were announced.

One of the great things about watching ski runs is to see how the Vancouver’s mountain setting revealed itself every time. It was breath-taking. And there’s the city itself, gleamingly hip and cosmopolitan against a backdrop of fierce nature. Even if Canadian athletes aren’t sweeping the podiums, the country has the shown the world a remarkable culture full of natural beauty and modern elan. Now there’s something to be proud about.

Plus, we got to see fiddle players who could tap dance. What more could you want?

One On One With Vince
•

Walk into the offices of DC City Council Chairman Vincent Gray, and it’s like walking into two different
worlds.

Along a small corridor of offices and cubicles, there are people talking on the phone; computers are on. It’s got all the signs of any busy bureaucratic office. Walk into his office, with Gray leading the way, and the busy sounds die down. His office is reminiscent of an expansive drawing room — leather chairs, a large desk, books and pictures on the wall.

The two-world metaphor works in another way now: Gray, who prevailed over incumbent Mayor Adrian Fenty in the race for the Democratic mayoral nomination on September 14, now has his feet in two different places. He’s still the Council Chairman, but he’s also the presumptive mayor of the District of Columbia.

It’s presumptive because usually, in this heavily Democratic city, if you win the Democratic Party’s nomination you become mayor. There are only ever nominal Republican or third-party opposition in the general election, which this year is November 2. This will probably be the case again, even though some disaffected folks have started a Fenty write-in website.

“People don’t know what to call me or how to describe my status,” Gray joked as we settled in for an interview.

Gray’s victory has unsettled people. While it’s sometimes jarring even to Gray, it’s even more jarring to Fenty supporters and supporters of DCPS Chancellor Michelle Rhee, who had trouble imaging such a result ever coming to pass. Some of the same people have painted the results in the darkest of terms.

That included Rhee, who at first, in the aftermath of the Newseum’s premiere of “Waiting for Superman”, used the word “devastating” describing the election results. Of course she later backtracked.

Gray, who says he hasn’t yet seen the film, said that he’s not making personnel decisions at the moment. So the oft-asked question about Rhee’s status, asked almost routinely throughout the campaign, goes largely unanswered when I asked it yet again. “I know, I know,” he said. “But I haven’t made a decision on that yet. Honestly, when she and I met we didn’t talk about any of that. We talked about educational issues, education philosophy, ideas about schools and children and teachers. It was a pretty far-ranging conversation, so we didn’t get to that. We’ll obviously be talking again.” But if pictures and video of the two emerging from their recent meetings were any indication
— the two literally stood at some distance from each other, and Rhee left quickly — than clearly the discussions had some heft to them.

“Right now, nothing is off the table,” Gray said. Asked if that included Rhee staying on as chancellor, in some form or another, he said, “I haven’t ruled it out.”

As usual, Gray is being deliberative, not making up his mind quickly even if there is a certain amount of pressure — most of it coming from the media.

“Sometimes, it’s hard to believe that we are where we are,” Gray said. “I feel most of the time incredibly humbled by what’s transpired, but I was confident in making that decision to run. I never thought we couldn’t win. And as those first polls about the mayor surfaced, and later on, it was pretty clear to me that there were a lot of unhappy people out there, some angry people.”

“Of course, when some early polls came in election night they had us behind,” he said. “That had a chilling effect, to say the least.”

Back in the summer, when we first had a long conversation with Gray at the Busboys and Poets site near his campaign headquarters, he stated emphatically that this city was more divided today than at any time in its history of home rule. He turned out to be acutely accurate.

“I get these questions all the time,” he said. “What are you going to do about Marion Barry? Are we going to go back to the old politics? That sort of thing.”

“I understand that, believe me. But…people should remember that I wasn’t part of all that. I’m not a career politician, who’s been doing this stuff all of my life. I didn’t run for office until 2004, the first time,” he said. “And when it comes to Mr. Barry, I’m interested in responding to the needs of his constituents, as well as the constituents in all of the city’s wards. I’m not obligated to Mr. Barry.”

It’s fair to say he proved that earlier this year, when Mr. Barry once again came under fire, and the council as a whole voted to censure Barry and strip him of his committee chair position. When the vote came, it was Gray who handled it with both dignity and toughness, unwavering, because it was the correct thing to do, in spite of Mr. Barry’s emotional importuning during the proceedings.

“We did what we had to do. People seem to forget that,” Gray said.

There is certain toughness in Gray that isn’t always readily self-evident. He has what in old-school terms you might call good manners, but there are fires burning there. A widower, he’s lived alone, in a house in the Hillcrest neighborhood, in Ward 7 since the death of his wife Loretta, a schoolteacher, in 1998. He has almost a courtly way about him. He’s a man who believes in observing the formalities.
There’s almost an idiosyncratic dynamic about him. You saw it in the campaign. He carries himself with authority and confidence, fully aware of the importance of position and endeavor. But at the same time, he has the very quality that many people thought Fenty lacked: a consideration for and curiosity about people.

At candidate forums, he could get prickly and combative, but he also looked like somebody that was enjoying himself. His theme is that he will run a One-City government, inclusive of the participation and the views of others. “Don’t stand on the sidelines,” he urges people when it comes to issues. “Be a part of the debate, a part of the discussion.” Put him in a parade, and he might take hours to get through, as you could see, at the Adams Morgan Festival, two days before the election. His supporters surged forward only to lose the candidate, who had been buttonholed by someone he knew, jaw-boning as the parade passed by.

“Yeah, I guess it does take me a while to get through a parade,” he said. “I just think it’s important to talk with people and even more important to listen.”

He knows he’s got his work cut out for him. “We’re facing a huge $175 million budget deficit
— more than that I’m told — and we need everybody working together on that. We’re all in this together.”

He knows too that the election results, which showed him winning by huge margins in the mostly black wards and losing by large margins in the mostly white ward, exposed the great divide that he had identified. “It’s not just race. It’s economic; it’s perceptions of government,” he said. Nationally, his win was being touted by media types as a rejection of education reform.

Gray typically resented that notion. “That’s just not an accurate perception or reality,” he said. “I am firmly committed to education reform, and I think a lot of good things have already been done in that direction. The election wasn’t about whether or not to reform the schools or that they needed reform. They did. I want to continue to do that. In fact, I want education reform to expand to include early education, [with] more emphasis on charter schools, vocational schools. We have to tackle the other issues that impact schools — the lack of jobs in the poor wards. It’s disgraceful. My approach, I think, is a little more holistic.”

“We’re going to move forward,” he said. “Make no mistake about that.”

Gray’s vision of “One City” was tested in a previous race for the council chairmanship. There he defeated Kathy Patterson, the council member from predominantly white Ward 3, by a double-digit margin. “One City” was put into practice again this week, when he embarked on the first of eight promised town hall meetings across all of the city’s wards.

“We’re going to be there to listen to people,” he said. “We’ll have groups on different topics so that there won’t be redundancy. I want to know what’s on people’s minds — what they’re concerned about when it comes to myself.”

“I want to be the man that unites the city,” he said. “I want people to feel that they’re not forgotten — that they’re part of the debate, part of the discussion.”

He also said that he would revive Mayor Anthony Williams’ Citizens Summit, probably in November, in which residents from all wards can come together to provide input on planning and budget issues.

Gray is known as a consensus seeker, deliberative, and even “plodding,” as one critic described it. “That’s not it at all,” he said. “Leadership to me is not just about making decisions per se. It’s about making decisions and getting people to come with you — to understand what you’re doing, hopefully by inspiring people.”

Gray knows he’s walking a bit of a tightrope — allaying the fears of the people who voted against him while meeting the expectations of the people who voted for him.

“I think my wife would have warned me not to get a big head,” he said. “But I can tell you this much, nobody has to worry that I’m going to be wearing a hat that doesn’t fit me.”

There’s a solidity about the man. It’s not that he’s got a thousand close friends but that he has a solid life; his children, Jonice Gray Tucker and Vincent Carlos Gray, and grandchildren are proudly exhibited in photographs on the wall. There’s his Catholic faith and his best friend Lorrain Green, who was his campaign chairman and “the person I’ll talk with, go over things with” he said. “I’ve known her for 20 years or more.” Gray, who once was a highly touted high school baseball player at Dunbar High School — enough to make major league scouts look at him — still plays in a Washington Recreation League at first base. “Keeps me in shape,” said Gray, who at 67 is the city’s oldest elected mayor. He also has a cat named Samurai and is, apparently, known to be quite the hand-dancer.

Dignity and respect mean a lot to him. “I’ve always believed you treat people with respect,” he said. “Everyone.” [gallery ids="99204,103437" nav="thumbs"]